Game Day Thread: Toronto Maple Leafs @ Boston Bruins

Tonight at the TD Garden, the Toronto Maple Leafs will return, and this is perhaps a special game in that two best buds David Pastrnak and William Nylander get to see each other on the ice for the first time all year.
The Bruins just got back from their Florida road trip with no wins.
In fact, they are 1-4-0 in their last 5 games, with no ROW. Definitely not a good stretch of games for them. But while the Bruins played a dreadful game in Sunrise against a lousy Panthers team, they played a pretty decent game against the intimidating Tampa Bay Lightning.

Overall, the Bruins have struggled to put points on the board. They’d been criticized as a one-line team when Bergeron was playing, and after he was injured, the top line had difficulty putting pucks all the way into the nets.
We’ve seen a few players contribute – Nordstrom, DeBrusk and on occasion Donato all managed to rack up multiple goals, but mostly what has saved their bacon has been excellent goaltending from both Rask and Halak for most of this stretch.

Let’s do some lines.
On the side of good news, defenseman Charlie McAvoy returned to the roster on Thursday. But not all the roster news is good

Jake DeBrusk is not here today. He was physically not feeling well, could be related to the puck to the head. He will not play tonight or tomorrow night.

So that looks pretty promising, and not desperate at all. I’m super excited.

Bruins Forward Lines

Brad Marchand

David Krejci

David Pastrnak

Danton Heinen

Colby Cave, man

David Backes

Ryan Donato

#23 Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson

Joakim Nordstrom

#28 Gemel Smith

Sean Kuraly

Chris Wagner

Bruins Defensive pairs

Torey Krug

Brandon Carlo

Matt Grzelcyk

Charlie McAvoy

John Moore

Steven Kampfer

Bruins Goaltending

#41 Jaroslav Halak

(#40 Tuukka Rask)

Tonight’s opponent are the Maple Leafs. They are running at a record of 20-8-1, placing them 6 points ahead of the Bruins in the standings. Patrick Marleau is who has played a whopping 737 games in a row out of a career total of 1604 games was not at practice. Daily Faceoff did not have him on the expected roter. Yeah, he hasn’t missed a game since the 2008-9 season.
Wayward forward William Nylander is back in the fold, having signed a shiny new contract at the last hour, but the drama wasn’t quite over:

#Leafs say William Nylander and Kasperi Kapanen were involved in "a minor" car accident near the team's practice facility this afternoon. Team adds there were no injuries.